About 'having it all'

I have never really been very happy with my body. As a child, I was not the fastest because (as I have learned just recently) I have hyper mobile joints, which makes it more difficult to achieve high speed and agility.

As a teenager, I started having a very feminine body early on and that made me stand out in comparison to all other girls that were still super skinny.

Throughout my late teenage years and 20s I always could find something not to like about it. Something not perfect. Not fitting into golden standard of a glossy magazine cover, where they all seem to have the same shape, absolutely perfect skin and whiter than white teeth.

While I was pregnant for the first time, I was super afraid to “ruin” my body. It seemed that everywhere I looked, there were horror stories of women that gained enormous amount of weight and never lost it, horrible stretch marks, saggy/ spaniel-ear type boobs, lost hair, varicose veins, forever puffy eyes and grey skin. All of that topped with greasy hair and grey, worn out and super dirty (snot, puke, baby poo etc.) oversize t-shirt and sweatpants (as she cannot fit ANY of her normal clothes).

Strangely enough, none of that seemed to be true. My body quickly came back to the starting weight and shape with only slight changes, which not only did not matter – I actually stopped caring about all of those imperfections that were there before. I do not mean I stopped caring about my looks, just that I could put that into perspective now that my body has carried a child, gave birth to it, fed it for months and came back pretty much to starting position without any crazy diets or miracle cures.

Paradoxically, as my body grew older and saggier, I became much more happy with it. I kind of made peace with it and got certain respect for what it could do instead of just focusing on what it could not.